Exquisite Corpse
New York, 1940: the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, whilst relieved that she has escaped the war in Europe with her new husband, comes to terms with the end of her affair with Max Ernst: “it is impossible to ignore when love ends because it is physically painful.”
Their story is not told chronologically; sometimes it is glimpsed through the eyes of other Surrealists as their lives intertwine. Gala Éluard’s story follows, though it predates Leonora’s by two decades; the link is that Ernst is then Gala’s lover, though that relationship falters once Paul Éluard leaves.
It is Angelina Beloff’s turn next, waiting hopelessly in Paris for the return of her husband Diego Rivera and mourning the death of their baby. While it was Angelina who set Rivera on the path that led to him being recalled to Mexico for a major commission, history has allowed her to be overshadowed as wife and artist by Frida Kahlo.
Then Remedios Varo leaves Franco’s Spain for Paris and at a party hosted by André Breton meets Ernst, Carrington and Paul Éluard (Exquisite Corpse is the name of a game Breton has his guests play). There is more: Marcel Moore and Claude Cahun as lesbian lovers look at first as though they will be granted little more space than an intriguing vignette, but as this novella moves back and forth chronologically we see them as activists in occupied Jersey.
The last vignette concerns the Mexican artist, muse and model, Nahui Olin. Yes, a lot of ground—lives, decades and continents—is covered in this slender book. Lack of dialogue contributes to a sense that one is reading an essayist more than a novelist, yet this is a shimmering jewel of a book that I had to finish at one sitting.
